Tuesday, 25 May 2010

My first Mobile Monday for a while — I’ve been kind of busy with my second child, Oren, born on 7th April.

I arrived late for the presentation by Hugh Griffiths, though what I caught was a bit slow and plodding. However, Helen Keegan did a good job getting an interesting panel of content providers and advertising services together.

Nothing much new was discussed, but it was interesting to hear how the media producers are dealing with the massive skew in the market of the iPhone. Variouspeople are quite rightly saying that targeting the iPhone leaves 90% of your audience feeling left out, but then the percentage of traffic from only those devices indicates that the rest of the market are just so much harder to reach. The iPhone (and hopefully Android too!) makes it easy to interact with digital media when you’re out and about. You didn’t necessarily know you wanted to beforehand, but once you start using it you get hooked.

Panel discussion

Here’s my notes on the panel discussion. I definitely missed various comments from some people, so if you want something corrected or added please leave a comment or @me on twitter.

44% of people now blame brand if the experience is bad — no longer the operator!

“stop building vanity apps and having a one-night stand with your customers”

M&S going for mobile web, but with microsites and micro-apps to support

e.g. app to create labels for your kid’s school clothes

the touch revolution is coming — web site needs to be touch-enabled (and you might as well make it mobile friendly while you’re at it)

Why build an app when you can build it with a web app?

NJ: discovery — it’s more difficult to find a mobile web site

DGi: easiest way to market is an app store

This seems bizarre to me — surely it’s just as easy to search the web as it is to search the app store? I think it’s more awareness than discovery that’s the issue: iPhone users don’t search Google for a new icon on their device, even though lots of websites will make nice home screen bookmarks

What can happen to move us more towards 3 or 4 screen model (continuing access onto multiple devices)?

JD: have to relate to customer on the terms that they understand you, but move them into the digital world

NJ: some usage is substitutional to PC and some supplemental

e.g. “I saw this great house today — here, what do you think?”

DGi: with iPhone, finally have a direct channel to the customer without the operator getting in the way

previously, this has been hard

HK: phone usage survey

do you use the mobile web? No

but use facebook & email…

What’s the future of newspapers?

DGz: it’ll be here forever

HK: will decline, but not completely

if media owners can reduce their cost of producing

another 50 years

NJ: if it does die, the last paper sold will be a copy of the Daily Mail…

JD: will reduce to one or two titles

the ones to survive will be the ones that innovate and invest in journalism

About Me

I make things for mobile, web, voice and LEGO; create all sorts of stuff at Tesco Labs using agile development in any language that fits; run a CodeClub for kids in St Albans.
I blog about mobile stuff, Mac stuff (especially Time Machine), agile stuff and the events I attend.
I am @adamcohenrose on twitter — follow me!